A Pale Imitation
by purdys pal
Summary: If Carlos Cruz thought he really knew who Fiona Glenanne was, he was sadly mistaken and if Fiona Glenanne thought her new lover could ever be anything more than a pale imitation of her previous boyfriend she was just as naive.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: Burn Notice is not mine, this story has been written for fun.**

**A Pale Imitation.**

**A/N: _This is going to be a short story written in the hope that it will cleanse my muse of all her Carlos issues. I'm sorry to any of you who like the guy, but after 7.02 I just wished Jesse and Sam would have moved out of the way and let the fight happen. I realize Michael attacking her new beau would not endear Fiona to her previous boyfriend. But that doesn't mean there aren't other people out there who can show her Carlos is nothing more than a pale imitation of Michael Westen.  
_**

_**My thanks go out to Jedi Skysinger for reading thru and managing to find the time to fit in a BETA during her hectic day. Also a big apology to all the people who made the mistake of asking me my opinion of Carlos and Fiona, I am sorry for my tiny - okay, massive overreaction.  
**_

_**Let the therapy commence...**_

**Part one**

In the early hours of the morning with a tropical storm raging outside, Fiona Glenanne was suddenly woken by the sound of something heavy smashing down her front door. Jerking up into a sitting position, she was already pointing her H and K 9mm handgun at the door to her bedroom as she heard even more noise coming from the ground floor of her new house.

"Madre de Dios, what the hell?!" Her companion sat up, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Carlos Cruz leapt out of bed and was half way out of the door as Fiona was reaching for the rumpled white dress shirt laying on the floor next to the bed. "You stay there, Fi. This ain't gonna take long." Her lover gave her a smile filled with bravado and ran out of the room.

"_Jayzuz feckin' hell!"_

Fiona heard a thick Irish accent let loose with a string of expletives and, after letting out a cuss word or two of her own, she gave up on the shirt with the fiddly buttons and reached for her jeans and T-shirt instead.

"_Hands up!"_

"_An' who tha feck ar' ya?"_

Fiona groaned as Carlos and the intruder shouted over each other and then increased her speed, as the sound of a sudden crash was followed immediately by a bang and then the heavy thud of a body hitting the floor.

At the bottom of the stairs, she switched on the lights and stared at the sight which greeted her. Her brother Seamus bleeding all over her floor from a messy looking wound to his side standing over the unconscious body of her semi-naked boyfriend.

"Shay! What the -?"

"Oh, don'cha be givin' me no grief o'er this, sweetheart. Yar man har started it." He pointed then to his blood covered shirt. "An' dis, dis is all yar fault."

"_My_ fault!" she shrieked at her second oldest sibling. "How does _you_ leaking blood all over my polished floor become my fault?"

She threw him a clean towel to stem the blood flow while she checked on her boyfriend. "What did you do to him?" she growled, as she felt a large knot forming on Carlos' skull.

"I gave tha lad a wee tap, thot wa' all an' he fair fainted on me."

Fiona looked up and noticed the Glock 19 semi-automatic in her brother's right hand. "Lucky for you he's going to live; which is more than you will if you keep bleeding on me floor."

Apart from the lump on his head, she could find no other injuries. She was positive Carlos would wake up with nothing more than a headache. So for now her boyfriend could be left safely to sleep off the blow to his head whereas Seamus was in need of at least a few stitches. She got to her feet and pushed her older brother towards the kitchen to where she kept her first aid kit.

"Take yar shirt off, an' then explain ta me why yer accusing me o' being tha cause of ya bleedin' like a stuck pig." Catching up on one of siblings brought out her brogue for just a moment.

With his shirt thrown into the sink, Seamus stood leaning back against the counter top while his sister cleaned away the blood from a deep cut in his side, scored by a passing bullet.

"I wa' passin' by, on me way ta a meetin' in Cuba when a dozen o' more of Greyson Miller's closest friends decided ta pay me a visit." He sucked in a breath as Fiona's skilled fingers walked over his ribs searching for any more damage. "We fought 'em off an' I came straight o'er ta give ya tha good word... Between Miller an' tha CIA nosin' around our business, ya've managed ta cause a right shit storm fer tha lot o' us -So I called Liam, an' I got tha all clear ta sort dis mess out fer good."

Fiona hid her feelings behind a stony exterior as she carefully began to sew up the wound to her sibling's side. She had a new house, a new job and a new lover. She was finally clear of all the chaos Michael Westen had brought into her life, and now Seamus Glenanne was about to turn Miami into Belfast on a Saturday night. She blinked rapidly trying to remain calm.

"I had no choice, Seamus. I was about to rot away in -"

"Ya broke our mammy's heart, talkin' ta tha law... An' whar' tha hell tis McBride? Wa' it him thot had ya give away a friend?"

She covered the wound with a dressing and then stood up straight, her arms crossed over her chest. "Miller was _never_ a friend, more of a business acquaintance, and not a very good one at that. What happened - it's too complicated to explain." She sighed and walked back into the living room, picking up one of her lover's clean t shirts from where it lay on top of a pile of neatly folded clothes. "Put this on and then help me get Carlos onto the couch."

Seamus looked the younger man over critically. "If yer gonna keep dis one around, sis, yer gonna have ta teach him ta look after himself. I tell ya, sweetheart, I took him down in two moves. Ya keep spittin' in tha face o' men like Miller an' this un is gonna end up six feet under."

"I –" She stopped trying to justify herself to her brother. Instead she nodded towards his freshly stitched up side. "So what happened?"

"Aw, I got word thar wa' a storm brewin' an' tied up in one o' Delaney's boathouses. Then seein' how we wa' stuck in Miami, I thought we'd go have a few drinks at Benny's an' wait out tha storm. We'd just walked off tha jetty when, all o' a sudden, somebody starts shootin' at us." He paused and looked around, his eyes lighting on the bottles of spirits sitting on a shelf across the room. "Have ya got any Jameson's o'er thar, sweetheart?"

Fiona pursed her lips and then went to pour him a large Irish whiskey. She knew it was no good pushing any of her brothers and Seamus was only slightly less pig-headed than Liam and Sean. With a drink in his hand, he got back to his story.

"So, after we've traded a few shots, an' I got this little nick an' Pat gotta load of splinters in his face from a ricochet, Dara an' Brendan, went an' got hold o' one o' Delaney's RPGs an' as ya can imagine thot ended tha dust up."

Fiona closed her eyes for a moment while she counted to ten. She could guess at the damage done to the dock and how Jojo Delaney was going to react to a strong police and FBI presence around one of his properties. "How do you know it was Greyson Miller? It could have been somebody you've upset, or Jojo has enemies."

"Because, one o' them shouted out they wa' after Fiona Glenanne an' tha nice fat bounty Grey Miller put on har head... Exactly how many bounties have ya got on yar head at tha moment, Fiona?"

She was saved from answering by Carlos letting out a long moan and struggling up into a sitting position. "What the hell!" He looked rapidly between where Fiona sat at his side and the tall, muscular intruder standing at ease drinking the whisky he'd bought Fiona a week ago and wearing one of his T-shirts.

"Carlos, this is my brother Seamus." Fiona smiled at her boyfriend.

"Your brother?" he asked, gently touching the tender lump on his head.

Seamus Glenanne stared back, his pale blue eyes sparkling with good humor. "He's not quite tha full shillin' is he, Sis?"

"What?" Carlos managed to push past Fiona to get to his feet. "What sort of brother breaks down a front door and comes in with a gun in his hand?"

"Carlos, I think you should leave," Fiona announced. "Seamus has come with some – disturbing news, I have to go and sort out a little problem - family related." She was becoming stuck for the right words. Carlos was good with a gun and they had been in quite a few sticky situations together, but this was different.

"Hey, you have a problem, I'm here for you." Carlos took hold of Fiona tenderly by the shoulders, staring into her eyes. "I can handle myself."

Fiona shot her brother a look as the older man snorted his disbelief.

"Okay, then." Seamus clapped his hands together. "We best get this sorted. Fiona, sweetheart, if ya can tear yerself away from yar lover boy, an' tell me whar ya keep yar C4, we'll get started."

Carlos stepped back. "C4? What are we blowing up?"

"Every fecking bounty hunter who is going after our Fiona. Ya have a problem wit' thot, sonny?"

Fiona shook her head as the new man in her life looked from her grim expression to the jovial one on her brother's face with growing awe on his scruffy countenance. If Carlos Cruz thought he really knew who Fiona Glenanne was, he was sadly mistaken and his education was about to begin.


	2. Chapter 2

**A Pale Imitation.**

**A/N: Thank you everybody who read, reviewed or favorited/follows this story. I have my Carlos bashing head back on, and having caught all the hints about how long this guy is going to be around I think the therapy could take more than the few chapters I had planned.  
**

**I'm sending extra thanks out to the amazing Amanda Hawthorn who read through at least two versions of this chapter, and two the stupendous Jedi Skysinger for not only the read thrus but for finding the time to BETA too.**

_**Part Two**_

Seamus Glenanne was a plain-speaking, practical natured man who accepted his lot in life without complaint. He made his living running guns for several East European and Middle Eastern arms dealers and now, as his work for the Provisional IRA was drying up, he also on occasion for a rather large fee destroyed the nets or, if paid very well, sunk the Spanish fishing boats which strayed into the Irish fishing fleets waters.

He freely admitted he didn't have his older brother Liam's organizational skills, nor his cold logical approach to life's little problems, nor did he have his sister's or their brother Sean's temper and knack for either getting into or causing trouble. As for Colin's abilities with a computer… well, Seamus could program and work the navigational computers on his boat, but other than that he never bothered to learn anything that didn't directly affect himself. School had never played a big part in his life and nobody had ever suggested higher education for Patrick and Maeve's third born son.

But what he did have, and it was the one innate skill he shared with his sister, was an ability to read people. In his line of work, he dealt with dangerous men and women all the time and he had learnt early on in his career to spot the unstable ones who were always a pain to deal with and best avoided, or those crazy enough to think about double crossing him and his PIRA sponsors. It was the reason, besides her affinity for languages that had caused Seamus to allow his sister to travel the world with him, learning the trade of smuggling illegal weaponry.

Right now, he was leaning back against Fiona's dining table, with a cigarette in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other, with a bemused smile on his face as he took his time studying his little sister's new boyfriend and so far, from what he could see, he wasn't impressed. He could only conclude that Fiona was deliberately ignoring the man's shortcomings for some reason he hadn't worked out just yet.

His baby sister was moving around her home, ripping the cloth backs off her fancy white three piece suite, pulling skirting boards away from walls and lifting up several floor boards. At each location, she produced something lethal. Thus far, she had uncovered six full size bricks of C4, what looked to be about 6 pounds of Semtex, all in small pre-cut blocks, a nicely large brick of RDX, a P90, four Mac 10s with six clips for each and a Heckler and Koch sniper rifle with a box of 50 caliber cartridges.

As she revealed each item, her mother hen of a boyfriend had looked more confused and angry. "You said you were looking for honesty in a relationship," the young man hissed. "That you'd hadda enough lies and we wouldn't keep secrets from each other and now I find out you're hiding explosives inside the furniture. What else should I know, Fi? Is this about Michael?"

_Ah McBride. _Seamus ducked his head down; now he knew what this was about. _She's hadda fallin' out wit' McBride. This wa' jus' like tha las' time._

"This's has nothing to do with Michael - well, not directly, anyway. I told you why I had to give up selling guns."

_Tha first time McBride left har, she went off on a mad spree wit' Tommy O'Neill, only comin' ta har senses when tha crazed fool tried to blow up a bus load o' kiddies._

"So why is there C4 hidden in the couch? We make out on that couch and you've got high explosives stored right underneath where we ..uh..sat."

_No, this fella was thankfully no O'Neill or Armand Andreani. This Carlos.. whatever his name was, was jus' like all tha others she chose when she decided she wanted a "normal life"... Whatever the feck normal was supposed to mean._

"What girl doesn't want to have a little home protection?" She dismissed the boyfriend's worries with a flick of her hand through her long hair. "Why don'tcha go out to the car and get our hardware out of the trunk?"

The look on the boyfriend's face caused Seamus to softly chuckle. _Whot wa' wrong wit' tha man? Every woman he knew kept a little somethin' in tha' house ta keep har safe. Their mam stocked tha' whole Glenanne family emergency arsenal in the cupboard under her stairs, his own Isabelle kept a Mac 10 in her wardrobe and a pump action shotgun in the airing cupboard for any little problems which might occur while he was away and Sean's wife Rosanna had taken a liking for semi-automatic handguns._

"Trouble in paradise, sweetheart?" he asked mildly, as Fiona walked over to his side carrying her supplies of C4.

"No, it's fine. I _should_ have told him about Miller... I just thought it wouldn't be a problem. I'm not buying or selling guns any more. This is a new start. A new me."

"Aye, an' d'ya recall how ya las' new start went? Ya can't change who ya are fer some man, Fiona. I thought ya learned thot lesson a long time ago."

"I don't know what you mean." Her eyes sparked with anger.

"Oh, let's see…" He pretended to think about it. "How about thot New York banker fella, Kavan - Whotever his name wa'... D'ya remember ham? A nice guy, a loyal fundraiser fer tha cause, but he had no tactical awareness, which meant he dinnae always remember ta check tha underneath o' his car. He also had no clue about memorizin' how many exits thar wa' in a room an' he couldnae shoot a gun fer love nor money."

Fiona's mouth opened and closed. "Tha wasn't me fault."

Kavan Daly never knew that he was a victim of circumstance. The circumstance being he was dating Fiona Glenanne when Thomas O'Neill came to town looking for his former girlfriend and partner in crime. If he had known to check out the exits in a room, he would never have run down the very obvious main staircase in his effort to escape the men bursting into Fiona's apartment. If he had been capable of shooting a gun, he might have been able to hold off O'Neill's men for a while, at least long enough for the police to arrive, and if he'd had a smidgeon of tactical awareness, he would have realized he was being herded towards the parking garage and he would never have jumped into Fiona's car and started the engine without wondering why the men firing on him were keeping their distance.

"Nobody said it wa', sweetheart. Kavan wa' a full grown man. He knew who ya war an' whot ya did an' he thought he could live in yar world."

For a moment, there was silence between the two siblings and then, all of a sudden, the older man stood up straight and walked slowly over to the weapons laying on the floor of his sister's living room.

"So, let's have a look at whot ya got." He helped her carry her supplies to the table, spread the items out and began picking up the guns one by one to check that they were all in working order.

"Is this all ya got?" he asked. "You've gone soft. This -"He held up the P90, examining the rifle. "Our mammy has a better armoury than this." He put the rifle down and pointed to her meager supply of explosives. "An' thot little lot ain't gonna be enough fer what I have planned."

"I don't have access to -" she replied hotly, but he cut her off.

"Aye, an' whose fault would thot be?" he answered back and then huffed in annoyance when she swiped his freshly lit cigarette from between his fingers.

"Ya don't understand whot I went through." Fiona's native brogue came back as she got angrier. She dug a pointed finger into his bicep before taking the cigarette she had snatched from him over to the sink. "And who tol' ya thot ya could smoke in me house?" She ran the end under the tap and then threw it in the trash.

Seamus beamed, happy to see that some spark of the sister he knew and loved still existed. "I smoke whar' I please, sweetheart... Now, have ya got any t'ing ta set off yar fireworks?"

Another angry huff followed and she brushed past him on her way to the stairs. "I have a box of supplies in my bedroom."

While he waited, he refilled his glass from the bottle of Irish whiskey and then looked up as the front door opened and Carlos came inside half carrying, half dragging a large canvas bag.

"Where's Fi?" asked the mother hen.

"Off ta find her little bag o' tricks." Seamus knocked back the glass of spirits in one gulp and then turned his attention on to the new boyfriend as he began to pull out a variety of guns from the bag.

The guy looked like he knew how to handle weapons. Seamus had already noted the younger man had a calluses on his trigger finger and the palm of his hand, so the Irishman assumed that was something in his favor.

"So, whot's yar background, fella?" he inquired.

"Background?" Carlos echoed.

"Aye, whot d'ya get up ta, when yer not in me sister's bed?" Seamus was already forming an opinion on the younger man's usefulness in the upcoming campaign.

"It's none of your business, but if you must know, _we_ work together. We hunt down bail jumpers."

Seamus coughed and choked, his eyes going wide and filling with moisture. "Yer _bounty hunters?"_ he managed to ask as he slowly straightened up and wiped a hand over his eyes. _Well, tha boy had courage ta burn, makin' thot little announcement... Or he wa' a fool who dinnae know who he wa' talkin' ta._

"We're the best in Miami." Carlos announced proudly.

"Aye, sonny, ya could be one o' tha richest, too, if ya turn Fi thar over ta Miller fer tha nice half million he's offering... Thot's whot tha _bounty_ tis on _har_ head." _Definitely a fool... Fiona was gonna kill ham for blabbing about her lil' secret career change._

"That's not the same," Carlos rushed to explain.

"Yer right on thot." Seamus's eyes gleamed and he looked to where Fiona was walking down the stairs with a large box in her hands.

"Boys?" Fiona reached the ground floor. "No fighting in the house." She thrust the box into Seamus' hands hard enough to make him take a step back. "Your detonators, fuses and timers."

Inside the box he found everything an explosive expert needed to wire plastique to go boom. "It'll do." He feigned disappointment just to see the spark grow in his sister's eyes. "But ya should really getta a hold of some o' tha modern stuff."

**()()**

An hour later, as she finished putting together the final detonator and timer for Seamus to attach to last of her small blocks of pre-cut Semtex, Fiona couldn't help but think about all the times she had done this very thing with Michael Westen, the way she would get little electric shocks traveling through her heart and other places each time their fingers would brush against each other as they worked.

Glancing across the room, she looked over to where Carlos was loading their supply of guns, his face set in hard, serious lines. _She owed him an explanation. _A frown creased her brow as she thought about what was to come. _She should send him home._

"Whot tha feck is dis?!"

Fiona blinked and her shoulders slumped. Seamus was stood next to Carlos, holding up a freshly loaded Remington pump action shotgun. Her brother held the weapon away from himself as if it might be infectious. "Bean bag rounds?" He spat the words out. "D'ya t'ink we plan ta tickle Miller's men ta death?"

Fiona remembered her own response the first time Sam Axe had handed her a box of the non-lethal rounds. She felt a sinking feeling at her brother's next words.

"Oh, I've hadda enough o' dis." Seamus pulled out his cell phone. "Am getting' me boys har, an' then am callin' Seymour. Mebbe he has sommit decent I kin shoot wit'." While he waited for his first call to his oldest son Patrick to connect, he glared at his sister. "Ya've been in tha sun fer too long. It musta fried yar brains. I'll see ta dis little problem fer ya. Don'cha worry yar little head abou'it nae more, sweetheart."


End file.
